I read a book!

I'm currently reading "Tuesdays with Morrie" and after that will be "The Technician". I used to read "The Hardy Boys" as a kid, but then I stopped reading as I grew older. Just picking up the habit again now.

I have the same problem you do with tracking characters. I’ve started keeping a “cheat sheet” I tuck into the book and use as my bookmark. When a character is mentioned the *second time* I go back to the first mention and jot down notes that the author thought were important when the character was first introduced—sometimes it is the character’s appearance, sometimes it is the character’s relationship to another character, sometimes it is the character’s profession... My cheat sheet helps me remember characters until they are stuck in my mind and I don’t need the cheat sheet anymore. :)

I do all of my reading on my Kindle. But my reasons for preferring e-books over printed books has a lot to do with location. Living in Taiwan means English books are hard to find. And then when I do find them, they're quite expensive and there isn't much of a selection. Choices are usually YA fiction or best-sellers, neither of which I read. (I predominantly read fantasy.) Being able to choose, purchase, and download from an on-line bookstore is much easier.

It would depend a lot on what you are interested in, but among my favourites — and possibly not as well known because the authors are Canadian — are the Malazan Book of the Fallen series and anything by Guy Gavriel Kay. If you're reading the Malazan books, though, be patient. Whereas most fantasy books and series gradually introduce you to the world, the culture, the magic, and the gods, the Malazan books don't. The first book (Gardens of the Moon) starts at what seems to be the halfway point of the story. It might take until about halfway through the book before you really understand the world.

I can't really recommend any recent stuff because I tend not to read books shortly after they come out because there's so many other good books that have already been published that I'm still catching up on. I'll get around to the stuff published in 2018 and 2019 sometime, but for now I'm still reading the books in my library that were published many years ago. Once again, there are too many good books to read and it takes time to read them all.

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